Wikinews talk:Commentary pages on news events

Pre-proposal discussion

(context: Edbrown05 requested a page where people can comment on the news so the talk page can be reserved for discussions about the article. MessedRocker created this page as "Wikinews:Rant about articles, and posted a short introduction here about the purpose of this page. The introduction has since been removed, and the following comment is based on that introduction and a prior conversation.)

No, it's not about that (rant), it is about adding a tab to a news story so people can help improve and article and also talk about it. -Edbrown05 02:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

If you have the knowledge to add a "Comment" tab to the top of a news story then do it. Otherwise, don't waste my time. -Edbrown05 02:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That would require a modification to the interface -- I will look into it. Until then, you can use this page (or use the talk page like I have). ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm one ... i wanted to say "hard-assed" some thing or other... but I do believe the interface should support comments, and after that here I go acting again like the interface should support comments. Sorry, I amaze myself with some f the stupid stuff I say. -Edbrown05 03:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Would it be okay if the tab were to be named "editorial," because "comment" may be confused with "discussion"? ★MESSEDROCKER★ 11:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. It wouldn't be NPOV though, so we may have to tweak policy to exclude editorials from being neutral. PVJ^(Talk)_(Newpages) 12:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Well I think we know that much. The editorial tab would go to Wikinews:Editorial/pagetitle, and neutrality rules don't apply to the project space. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 20:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like a great idea. I Support. —FellowWikiNews (W) 20:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, instead of it being a subpage, assuming this idea gets support, I'm going to petition the Wikimedia tech crew to install an Editorial namespace and add a third editorial tab to the interface instead, rather than there be links to "Wikinews:Editorial/pagename" that would have to be manually moved along with the articles, and also if there were a tab that would be some sorta JavaScript hack. If this happens, then we can set down some rules for the Editorial namespace. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 21:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Make that: a Commentary namespace with a "post your opinion" tab. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 21:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The naming convention of the "Tab" could mean a lot. I now only realized you took off with this. 'Editorial' rings bad, 'Comment' rings right better... I don't know. People should be able to comment on the news. -Edbrown05 09:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion about proposal

I have now posted a proposal. How does this sound? ★MESSEDROCKER★ 23:20, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Good luck with it. I support this proposal (and it in its other various incarnations like template:xc user:Bawolff/idea ..., except for the link to /./digg etc version as I think thats kinda useless)

as it would definitly increase story output and reasdership in my opinion. (people don't like reading about the news, they like whining about it). However I've seen this proposal (versions of it) shot down many times, and I honestly don't hold much hope. But good luck. user:Bawolff 09:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• strongly oppose More adolescent and teenage rant is unnecessary. Actually there is already on all, including this, wiki companies talk about the topic not change of content of the article. 149.9.0.27

"strongly support adolescent and teenage rants, the next up news writers. -Edbrown05 08:38, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

adolescent and teenage rants are stupid like Ann Coulter, making money with any idiotic rant. 81.169.183.71

Only problem is how to decide when a rant becomes too stupid. We don't want to become /. (or do we, /. 's fairly popular). Bawolff ☺☻ 08:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Support Many news websites I have come across have a comments section. Readers will appreciate having a forum to voice their opinions on. PVJ^(Talk)_(Newpages) 11:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the idea of commentary from our readers is great, but at the same time it may be difficult to keep WN:NPOV - Cartman02au (Talk)(AU Portal) 02:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

i have big doubts about this idea. while i absolutely support having a place for readers to comment on the article (how its written, how to improve it and so), i don't like the idea of an area of Wikinews dedicated to readers comments on the subject of the article.

• i presume what is acceptable as comment will be much more liberally defined than what is ok for article and discussion pages (o/w why have a separate page at all?). exactly how relaxed? we don't have much of a guideline on what's acceptable in comments (we've had big problems deciding what comment falls foul of civility, is inflammatory ...etc bfor). Who's going to trawl this commentary space and keep it clean? especially since we're so short of RC watchers that main page vandalism stays on for many minutes.
• yes, other news sites have a place for comment, but its a sandboxed, moderated area. Wikinews is not like that. I, for one, think there're better things to do on Wikinews than referee a "few-holds-barred" pov fight on the comments page. the big problem for Wikinews will be that any such fight is very likely to spill over into the article as well.
• there are any number of other places better suited for discussion than Wikinews mainspace. the standard talk page (within limits) and user talk pages here, lots of places elsewhere on the web. if someone has a itch for a big-time discussion about an article's subject, why not do it on user pages or offsite and put a link on the talk page? — Doldrums(talk) 06:13, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

These are all good problems with it, and time will tell if it does become a management nightmare. I thinks comments would have to be about the topic of an article, but not about making the article better. However I think it would be very benificial. By sandboxed structed area, do you mean something like /idea|this? Bawolff ☺☻ 06:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

sandboxed in the sense that on other news sites, readers can post their comments, but cannot change others' comments or the article itself. here, we'll have to manually check such things. (note current six-week backlog on archiving)  — Doldrums(talk) 06:29, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

yes that is true (the only possible solution I see, is to somehow make section=new work on protected pages) . Bawolff ☺☻ 06:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. i recently felt bold and made this happen. do a hard refresh (ctrl+r in most browsers). Bawolff ☺☻ 06:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Implemntation

When do we decide to do it (or not do it). It'd take me about one minute to implement it (but that would have to use talk:foo_article/discussion or use a pseudo-namespace. we'd have to ask for a real ns which we proablly should). Bawolff ☺☻ 08:52, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Just want to make sure, the current proposal has no real structure to it. Basiclly a user presses a button, and it goes toan add a new section page. No fancy templating? Bawolff ☺☻ 22:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The Wikinews way seems to be bare bones on the facts and fancy free reporting. Press the buttons Bawolff. Serious opposition seems centered on acceptance. -Edbrown05 10:26, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

can we direct the comments tab link to [[Wikinews:Commentary pages on news events/Article-name]] or [[Wikinews:Commentary pages on news events#Article-name]]? this would make it easier to relocate or kill this project later on, i think. also "discuss", "comment", "view comment" buttons look a tad redundant. — Doldrums(talk) 06:19, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. its all in Mediawiki:monobook.js (near bottom). As for kiling the project later, if we remove the tabs, no one is going to ever find it, no matter where its located. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It won't be killed, the problem lies in the "Discussion" tab which needs to be be renamed to allow for the "Comment" tab. The two tabs would be confusing. -Edbrown05 06:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Got any suggestions fot the new name? - I think its Mediawiki:nstab-talk or something. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

i'd suggest we retain the talk page name as "Discussion", its well established, sticks to mediawiki convention.  — Doldrums(talk) 06:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Make the talk page mainly just for discussion about the article and ways it can be improved and comments for blog type comments. I would support a new space for comments, it would help those if they thought it was POV as a new space would be avoidable? --Nzgabriel | Talk 09:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

yes, thats the idea. If someone really hates it they can disable the tabs. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Post-implementation comments

Well I for one totally disagree with this evolution. Like we don't already have enough POV work, now there's gonna be every John Doe giving his €0.02 on the article. It's very un-wiki, but it's certainly a trend in news sites... --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 12:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Why does the Dan100 slew of edits on January 5 not include on the users history page the comment by the user that the RRS feed now has 30,000 subscribers. The subscriber base now exceeds Wikinews registered user base. That means when I load my home page and look at the headlines, why does somehow AP or Reuters seem less important.

But more important than that, what happened to the history of Dan's edits. If the wiki software goes f__ked up, then nothing will matter. -Edbrown05 02:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

What are you talking about?? User:Bawolff 02:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't like the implementation very much -- I wanted it to be more like a third tab after "article" and "discussion"... ★MESSEDROCKER★ 02:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

That proablly would look better. (I'll try and figure out how to change it soon) User:Bawolff 02:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Definetly. At the moment it looks like someone forgot to add and in a rush quickly added it. And does it work with resolutions of 800 x 600? --Nzgabriel | Talk 03:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Good question. for an ordinary user proablly yes. For an admin no (you'd have to scroll right). 24.65.52.20 03:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Technical difficulties

There is an error: if you click to view the comments, you cannot click on the article tab to go back, (example). And I would like it if the comments tab was in red text until a comment was added like the discussion tab link. And the add comments tab, etc should be available when view other pages, e.g. checking the history, discussion page, etc. --Nzgabriel | Talk 03:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Well to do the red thing, you'd need a lot of fancy javascript (beyond my skill level) (or actually convince some dev that they should make a new tab properly without javascript). Discussion tab is eassy to change. History I'd have to look into. As for article, leading back to article, that should be fixable. looking into when I have more time (tommorow) User:bawolff 03:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Cool, errors are common in first release phases. --Nzgabriel | Talk 03:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I can't currently see the comments tabs. --Nzgabriel | Talk 06:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

• strongly oppose idiotic idea. 202.71.100.89

Not This again

This had been bought up many times in the past, and every other time its been firmly rejected, this is why the POV wikia as set up, to allow comments like this off site. Brian | (Talk) | ^{New Zealand Portal} 22:19, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I personally think that having an external sites for comments (pov.wika, wiki-(de)bate, or even linking to /. digg/whatever) is a bad idea, because if they wanted to discuss on thoose sites, they would not be here. Bawolff :-)(-: 23:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I feel that this is a bad idea as it goes against wikinews NPOV, and not just our local policy - the policy that was imposed by the WMF on us, when wikinews was set up 2 years ago Brian | (Talk) | ^{New Zealand Portal} 23:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

This is not against policy. The WikiMediaFoundation policy, if I understand it correctly, calls for the creation and publication of articles that are reported with a neutral point of view. The foundation cannot, and would not, impose limitations on a person's expression of opinion. -Edbrown05 05:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well actually, they can do whatever they want. My understanding was it only applied to the main product of the wiki. (Normal talk pages arn't all that neutral either). On a side note other projects host non-neutral media - Commons, Wikisource is a collection of non-neutral media essentially, but its presented in a neutral way is how I always thought it followed that policy. (Previous unsigned comment by Bawolff).

Okay, grant you that Bawolff that WMF can do what it wants, but why would it want to exclude participation? If the premise of the building blocks of this site will only accomodate article preparation and creation, and then lacks a venue to acommodate reader reaction, then it is missing perhaps half or more of possible participation. How could a site that is "connected" want to miss connectivity? -Edbrown05 06:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This above comment goes of mine under the assumption that there are more readers than there are writers at Wikinews. I personally believe the circumstance of more readers than writers will grow. -Edbrown05 06:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

WMF couldn't possibly be trying to structure Wikinews to force only positive <or you bad, negative> contributions to the site could it? That would be something along the lines of engineering for a widget. So then when a gadget comes along the poor sad thing finds it has no place for it and wanders away. -Edbrown05 06:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

An appreciation of how hard it is for a news reporter to press the "Save" button is something I suspect is 90% unknown even by regulars here. -Edbrown05 06:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the opinions/comments will be able to help combat POV, filtering it out of the article because the editors will be able to voice their opinions in the appropriate page. --Nzgabriel | Talk 07:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's just say I completely against this proposal Brian | (Talk) | ^{New Zealand Portal} 09:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

fix needed?

[[Talk:Talk:Channel Seven loses control of audio/Comments]].  — Doldrums(talk) 15:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Already, if this comment referenced by Doldrums above has any connection to reality, the coments tab can show it helps by keeping writers honest.

Plus I am wondering why Channel Seven loses control of audio is published but doesn't appear on the Main Page. I can only imagine the headache Bawolff has bitten off with this. Maybe, I don't know, after this idea is fleshed out maybe some taking this to a higher Dev for help (?). -Edbrown05 05:41, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly new to this whole javascript thing. It proablly would be better if it was implemented as a real tab by the dev's, but it seems to me they don't move too fast in making non-critical things (just impressions I've got from reading various pages). However he comment that Doldrums mentioned along with every other one made so far should really be on the normal talk page. Bawolff :-)(-: 06:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

note I've fixed the paticulur issue Doldrums mantioned, however there are a couple more to go.

• When viewing the tab page, The article/normal talk tab should go to their respective page, and the comment should go to the current page.
• Moving pages can cause problems. Bawolff :-)(-: 06:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

When I click on 'view comments', the single comment linked to above by Doldrums appears. The 'article' tab appears in red, and the tabs across the top of the page appear as: article| discussion | edit this page | add comment | history | rename | watch | comment on article | view comments . When I click to 'comment on article' the page opens fine, but then when I click to 'view comments' what was there disappeared. The click stream is wrong :) -Edbrown05 07:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

dead?

i take it this idea has been dropped? have removed the note about moving comment pages from MediaWiki:Movepagetext and MediaWiki:Pagemovedtext. is this ok? are there other things to do?–Doldrums(talk) 07:28, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it's dead. Nobody's been using 'em.  Thunderhead  ►  07:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Mediawiki:Monobook.js needs to be fixed too, methinks. –Doldrums(talk) 07:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Hold on, it's live now though, isn't it? Must say I like them. Dan100 (Talk) 22:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it got re-added, but there was an error in the code that prevented it from working. See history of mediawiki:monobook.js. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I changed it to use new sections for new comments, if there is already comments. The good is that others won't interfere and overwrite other comments. The bad is they won't see them initially, and the editintro doesn't work (if there is already comments. f there isn't its okay) but the editintro never worked whenever the page is already created. Bawolff ☺☻ 18:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• I strongly opppose this idea. If you want to comment on the news, put it on your blog and link to the wikinews page. --Pixelface 22:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

• The warning box above the edit screen for Comments: pages has an incorrect link; the invitation to "post about factual errors on the article's regular talk page" links not to Talk:{PAGENAME} but to Comments_talk:{PAGENAME} --66.102.80.212 01:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Successful?

Now we seem to have pretty much everyone on board with {{haveyoursay}}, could do with some polishing up with a little javascript to make the Comments: tab a 3rd tab consistently with other tabs back to article and talk.

My opinion is the principle is working, and not creating too many headaches. What do those who were nay-sayers above say now? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:48, 10 November 2007 (UTC)